Invasion: Terminus

[Sanis Prent]

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TERMINUS



Almost heaven, Old Pantora
Crystal mountains, over lake Kasora
On the outer rim of the galaxy
Might not have much, but we have just what we need

Frontier lanes, light the way
Where my heart yearns to stay
Old Pantora
Far from coreward, light the way
Frontier lanes

Seekla cooked me breakfast. I painted her toenails. Fair trade. It was the sort of thing we had together that sounded stupid to explain to any other being in the galaxy. Not love, if that still existed. Not really anyway. But I couldn't pretend it was cheap, either. I darkened her doorway too many times to diminish it. She was young, but not too young. Old, but not too old. Twi'leks rarely had easy lives. She didn't talk about it, but I could see enough to know better. She didn't ask me why I kept coming back to her on Terminus again and again. The old business trip excuse was threadbare, and didn't jive with the cut of my clothes - which weren't. She knew I had money, but didn't wheedle more out of me than what she needed. I could've rented penthouses a month at a time. Instead, I went here - every time.

I was out of the lights of Bespin, but far from the dark. I could have been anyone here. Even myself. That was better than sex. Better than drugs. The chance to just drop everything, even if it was just for an occasional night and the morning after. I hadn't felt this free since catching sky under my feet for the first time.

The purple nail polish contrasted nicely against her green skin. It's not exactly a skill I'd put on a resume, but I'd like to think I got pretty good at it. I capped the jar, gently blowing at Seekla's toes. She wiggled them, giggling. We both sipped our caf while it was still warm.

"You 'ave to go."

"I have to go."

She signed something appropriately wistful with her lekku, but didn't say anything else. We just looked at each other with only the caf between us. Eventually, she broke the silence.

"Every time zat you go, zere ees always zometing I want to say, but I..."

"...don't know if you should. Or if you can."

She gulped.

"Me too."

I forced a smile.

"What if you packed up today? Leave Terminus behind. Come with me. I've been to half the best places in the galaxy by now, we can go see the other half. Live on room service."

It was a total fantasy, and I could plainly see that Seekla was taking it as exactly that.

"Weeth ze travelling business?"

"With the travelling business." I nodded sagely. "You could be my partner."

"Feefty-feefty?"

"Fifty-fifty."

"Zen what?"

"Oh...I figure after we're both richer than Gunray, we could buy our own moon. Nobody else, just us. Leave everything else behind - even our clothes!"

Seekla giggled. "I 'ope eet ees a tropical moon!"

"Well, if it's not, we'll have a hard time feeding each other cocopods and lying in frond hammocks. I'd better pick out a good moon in advance, just in case."

The chrono beeped. Our little fantasy had concluded. Seekla's smile dimmed slightly along with mine, and we both sighed.

"You 'ave to go."

"I 'ave to go."

She kissed me on my forehead. I kissed her on her cheek. We paused, and shared a kiss for real. No sappy goodbyes. No I love yous we can't be expected to keep. No promises of a next time. She slipped into her robe while I dressed, and saw me to the front door. Beyond, the vast cityscape of Terminus teemed with sky traffic weaving in a tiered grid through the skytowers of the ecumenopolis. I popped the gull-wing door of my rented speeder, and eased my briefcase onto the passenger seat. Before I climbed in, I popped the latches to peer within. A soothing blue glow filled my eyes.

Blue was the color of money, but I'd lost my illusions. Money couldn't buy me everything. Only in my fantasies.

[Madeleia]

Moving toward the entry rampway, Madie glanced toward her brother as he appeared to be following her. "Need you to stay with the Sunrise and see to the restocking."

His deflated look told her all she needed to know. "Babysit? Again," he sighed. "I had some things to look into while we're here."

Servos whined as the inner door opened to the YT 2400 and another as it lowered the ramp, allowing the fuel tainted air in. "We've already had that discussion," her hazel eyes narrowed. "We need to make a profit before you go blowing it on your swoop."

"I..."

"See you when I get back and there better not be anything extra in the cargo hold or attached to the bike." Descending toward the stained tarmac, she hoped that the credits on the credstick that she had left him with would all go to the fuel and food they needed, otherwise T.J. would be walking home.

"Love you too."

Ignoring him, she pressed toward the starport's main entrance, passing a host of freighters and several yachts within the large, very busy port. Right hand falling to the slender bulge in her jacket pocket, she was sure that the money that she had been given to pay Sanis was there. Smuggling coaxium for the Black Sun was the present mission and would finally get them into the green, personally. She was going to ensure that it went toward keeping her prized ship in the air instead of waiting for her brother's love of swoop racing to sink all they made. Shifting her mind to the approaching security station, the shapely smuggler soon passed through without incident and allowed her to continue to the speeder rental shop. Grabbing a racy model, the red vehicle was soon cruising through the busy city streets of Terminus. She only hoped the address she had been given was legitimate and would soon find out, she mused as Madeleia tapped the holomap on the central console. The route plotted as she continued driving, the condo was fast approaching.

[Elias Akasha]

With a subtle flick of his fingers, Elias Akasha nudged the rangefinder out of his eyeline. Sanis Prent. That name had been a low-to-middling fixture on Imperial Security Bureau watchlists for years, but in the last few it had gradually begun to creep higher. Ties to the Rebel Alliance. Ties to the Black Sun. The latest intel had him operating out of Cloud City on Bespin, employed to run one of the more presigious of the myriad gambling establishments that clung to the back of the mining colony like mynocks on a star whale.

Without a doubt, at least in Akasha's mind, Cumulus was a front for Black Sun and their operations in the Anoat Sector. The conventional approach to addressing the crimes of a man like Sanis Prent would be to launch an investigation, study his financials, wire tap his comms, watch him on Cloud City and wait for that inevitable misdeed that gave enough of an excuse to bring him in for questioning. That was a lengthy, invested process, and hardly worth it for an individual that would most likely be offered a plea deal in exchange for information that allowed the ISB to target his superiors within the organisation. That was if they could even make any of those allegations stick: after all, Cloud City was his home territory. He had connections there, resources, contingency plans, familiarity, and anything else a shrewd and organised criminal might need to help him stay enough steps ahead of the justice system to remain free and clear.

Here on Terminus though, Sanis Prent had left those contingencies and protections behind. He was exposed, and this was a rare opportunity to take advantage of that. Of course, such a method was too impulsive for the Imperial Security Bureau, and their procedures and protocols would be too lathargic to act upon such intelligence quickly enough for it to matter. That was where men like Elias Akasha came in. No longer an agent of the ISB, nor of the Imperial Guard as he had once been, Elias Akasha was now a Praetor of the Empire: an autonomous operative of the Commission for the Preservation of the New Order, chosen to serve as judge and jury for criminals who were otherwise beyond the reach of the Galactic Empire, and if needed to serve as their executioner as well. All due process in Akasha's arrests and terminations was handled in hindsight, and in a way he was little more than a sanctioned bounty hunter, working at the Minister of the Interior's behest. At times, he questioned the legitimacy of his status, and the motivations behind it. Was he merely an opportunity for the Empire to circumvent the proper application of law and order? Was he some paranoid counterpoint to the Imperial Knights, ensuring that such totalitarian enforcement wasn't soley the purview of Force-wielding warriors beyond the control and influence of COMPNOR? In the grand scheme of things though, any hesitance he may have felt was meaningless. He achieved results, for the benefit of the Empire, and was content to leave the technicalities and justificiations of it all in the hands of better men inclined to waste their time bickering about such things.

Elias glanced at the datapad in his hand, watching the slowly blinking light that represented the tracker that had been placed upon Sanis Prent's speeder while he was otherwise occupied by his Twi'lek companion. The datapad was carefully inserted into a housing on the dashboard of his own speeder - carefully chosen as the most generic, popular, and nondescript vehicle in current circulation in this part of Terminus, and purchased second-hand in cash to avoid leaving any sort of trail. He waited a few moments until Prent's speeder began to move on the digital display, and then after a silent five-count, powered up his engines, and gently eased himself out into traffic.

[Zereth Lancer]

The streets were full this time of day. Ideal for passing unseen among the masses. Down here, far beneath the shining towers of the Terminus hub the everyday workers moved from their first job to the second; walking without seeing, their eyes cast down, hands tight around their belongings. Great prosperity often creates equally great disparity. He had seen it with his own eyes on many different worlds boasted as the greatest in the universe; Coruscant, Corellia, Nar Shaddaa, and many more. The rich live above, the poor die below. Terminus was far from becoming the bloated corpse that is Coruscant, but one had only to look in the faces of the people and see that it was a future they were headed toward.

No effort was made to slip between the workers. No. He fell in line, matched their pace, and blended in. Only the slipping of a credit chit in a beggar's cup differentiated him from all those around him. Gone was his robes and cloak, and in their place the clothes of the every man; boots, dirty trousers, and a meant more for keeping out the cold than looking nice. His long black hair was braided tightly and wrapped around his neck. Eyes hidden behind shaded glasses. It was impossible to say just how well known his identity was within the Empire, and even here on a fringe world there could be knowledge of him and his organization.

The risk was worth the prize.

Edwin Molock was last seen on Terminus. As the architect of the Black Orphanage and many other clandestine Imperial programs targeting force users, Edwin was high on Eleutheria's list of targets. Very high. Rumor was the destruction of the Black Orphanage had left a sour taste in the mouth of Molock's superiors, perhaps results in the decommission of his other black sites and banishment to the far reaches of the galaxy. If he was here he was no doubt up to some new nefarious scheme, and Zereth would see any effort brought to ruin. Terminus was a big planet, and Molock just one person. There were those who could be bribed for their information, and the meeting had been organized. Black Sun was not the sort that Zereth would involve himself with, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

The location of the meeting was close by. Not far now.

[Sanis Prent]

Pickups and drops were a game of patience and methodical behavior. You never took the direct way to your meet. The assumption was that you could always have a tail. People would double back, triple back, change vehicles - anything it took to shake perceived heat. I was always a fan of indirect stops. Stop and grab a caf. Stop off with drycleaning (I took Seekla's, told her I was doing her a favor). Go somewhere with people. Terminus had a well-developed food skycar industry. You quickly figured out which corners of which skylane intersections you could pull over for chow.

It made the commute longer, but generally safer. You counted speeders behind you and looked for the common denominator. The extra diligence usually paid off, and you could pick up a tail. Only the most careful tails slipped under your radar. Of course, those were the ones you had to worry about the most.

I pulled over on a skylane that had slowed to a crawl. It was the morning rush, but I wasn't in a hurry. Plenty of time to pay a humble mom & pop Ithorian transient operation for a steaming bowl of dak suhar. Gave me plenty of time to mirror gaze at the traffic behind me while I slurped noodles and listened to the net frequencies.

"Up next on KCTG Terminus, we've got Chora Dar's hot new remix of Lapti Nek. But first, your morning traffic rep--"

The net audio gurgled into static. Frowning, I thumped the unit. No dice.

"Damn."

I flipped stations. More static. Another with the same result. I didn't believe in coincidences. Not to say that I'd taken any Jedi mystic talk to heart, but whether it was the Force or luck or having good or bad feelings about things, I'd learned long ago not to just shrug off the screaming improbabilities. This had all the earmarks of a signal jammer.

I threw my cup of noodles out of my window, and gunned it into the next gap in traffic lanes. My speeder got about a hundred meters down lane before I had to narrowly swerve to avoid someone who had themselves narrowly swerved to avoid someone else.

"Watch where you're driving you asshole! It's a long way down if you..."

My tirade tapered off. In the blue of morning sky above, I saw seven white oval shapes in low orbit I could've sworn weren't there a second ago. I blinked, and the number became twelve. Then twenty. Then a whole lot more.

[Madeleia]

Pacing within the living room of the fully furnished condo, Madeleia glanced at her chronometer again. He was late, she noted in exasperation. Sunlight pierced the thin curtains along the wide, windowed wall and brightened the well appointed room. Where the frell is he?

Typically, in this line of work, if someone was late to a dropoff that usually meant one of a few things. Either he was held up, arrested, or had enough heat on him that he couldn't make it and had to detour. None of which was good for her - they needed the money for this delivery. She wasn't broke, by any means, but with the way that her brother was spending his cut all the time, she had to be the adult which also meant nothing for herself.

Sighing, she continued pacing within the quiet confines of the Black Sun safehouse until the quiet was interrupted by the chirp of her comlink. Nearly jumping, she raised it and eyed the caller. T.J. She clicked the button, "What?"

"Need to get back to the ship, like yesterday." His tone told her something really bad was going on.

Moving toward the door, "What's going on?"

"You never watch the news? A huge fleet just jumped in to the system. Get your ass back here, now."

Now sprinting, Madeleia stuffed the comlink into her jacket pocket and continued running as fast as her legs would carry her, down the short steps and to the speeder. Yanking the door open, she slid into the driver's seat and hit the ignition, seconds later being followed by the accelerator as the door was still closing. Rising into the air, the smuggler now recalled her swoop racing days and wove through traffic, disregarding lights and anyone else. Horns blew at the maniac, but she ignored them all on her hurried flight back to the starport. Taking the comlink back out, she keyed in her brother's frequency.

"You here yet?"

"Did you get the Sunrise supplied?"

"Yes. Where are you?"

"Not far now. Get her fired up."

"What the frak you think I'm doing?"

"Okay." She clicked off her comlink one last time and returned it to her jacket pocket as the starport's main speeder entrance was in view and fast approaching. Nearly colliding with a black limo, Madeleia banked high to the left and nearly rolled her own vehicle in midair, then continued streaking into the parking garage. Driving it up to within feet of the turbolift, she hit the brakes and shoved the door open, then leaped out. Shocked people glared at the straw colored woman as she rushed to the lift and hit the button.

[Elias Akasha]

For a brief moment, an entire city-planet of people stared up at the sky. It wasn't silent, the air still filled with idling repulsorlifts as airspeeders continued to float in the sky, but the whine of revving thrusters, and a billion background conversations, all faded into little more than a murmur as Terminus stood, entranced.

The moment passed, and chaos descended. Different impulses and instincts clashed, as different breeds of people each engaged in whatever acts of self-preservation they thought best. Some rushed for speeders, trying to muscle their way out of the gridlock and race off - perhaps to the starports, or perhaps to some other district of the ecumenopolis that might by some fluke not be beneath the same sky-full of starships as the rest of this world looked to be. Others fled inside, stampeding towards basements, garages, subways, anything that would get them deeper into the planet, and thus further from the guns floating above, as if a few extra stories of duracrete and durasteel was going to mitigate whatever bombardment such ships might unleash. Some fell to their knees, crying out for whatever gods and forces they thought might intervene to save them. Others fought against the flow, rushing off in search of loved ones, or clambering closer to the sky, driven by curiosity or some suicidal urge to get closer.

Elias Akasha did none of those things. He had seen first-hand the devastation that an orbital bombardment could cause, and knew there was no action he could take that would save him if annihilation was what those ships intended. He knew that if such a fleet's intentions were to conquer and invade, the starports would likely be among their first targets - or at least, that would be the decision that Elias made, were he in command of such a campaign. As for loved ones, or hopes of escape, Elias had neither: or at least, none worth dwelling upon. All he had was his mission.

A younger Elias might have cursed, but today he remained silent as he clambered out of his speeder and onto the fuselage. A single, mistaken glance was aimed at the abyss below, and then driven from his mind as he leaped forward, hurling himself onto the speeder in front. His feet slipped as they landed, but reflexes fired, fingers squeezing against control circuits woven into his gloves that triggered the magnetics in the soles of his boots. His calves and shins strained against the structural reinforcements that wrapped around them, but his balance shifted, and his weight repositioned where it was meant to be. A few small micro-gestures reduced the mag strength from full into something more akin to friction, and he set off again, propelling himself along the queue of traffic towards his quarry.

By the time Akasha landed on the top of Sanis Prent's speeder, it was already too late. Reaching down for the driver-side hatch, Elias gripped tight with his crush-gauntlets and tore the door open.

"Congratulations, Mr Prent," his voice rumbled, punctuated with reverb and clicks as it escaped from his helmet speakers, "You're under arrest."

Amid a moment of pause, Elias glanced quickly at his surroundings, calculating his options.

"If you want to make it off this planet in as few pieces as possible, I suggest you come quietly."

[Zereth Lancer]

Zereth stopped. Like water breaking upon a rock the flow of bodies continued on, splitting around him. He felt it. Something was wrong. Despite the incredibly background noise that was the billions of life on Terminus he could still feel something else. It felt like nails on a chalkboard, or metal scraping against each other. It was agony. Prolonged and unflinching agony. Like a soul set on fire. It came from above, out in orbit, where the vague shapes of starships could be seen warping into the blue sky. Many ships. Too many ships. With the arrival of each ship the buzz increased until it was as if a chorus was screaming down from above.

It was terrifying.

In a moment he was in the air, launched as if from a springboard from directly from the river of people. Many stopped to watch him fly off, and gasped as he grabbed the railing of a balcony and pulled himself upwards, only to launch himself again from the thin rail and further up the building. He continued in this fashion. Climbing higher and higher, from one building to the next tallest. His coat was lost in the climb. Too restricting. The shades likewise fell from his nose during a flip. The boots almost met the same fate. The thick soled constructs were not well built for climbing and acrobatics.

Finally a skylane came into view. His only thought was dominated by the need to get to the starport. An invading fleet, as this could only be, would seek to take control of the starports and limit escape. He had to get there. Not to guarantee his own escape, but to aid in the evacuation that was no doubt beginning. The streets below were much too congested to be the best route, and they will soon be filled with the panicked and rioting masses. Instead he would use the skylanes. As he climbed up another level of a stretching skyscraper he looked out from a perch on a window ledge, ignoring the tapping and voices from within, and squinted into the sky looking for the starport. There it was. In the distance.

Letting go and pushing off the building, he sailed through the air and landed on top a speeder. He jumped from speeder to speeder with long, lengthy jumps and flips that maintained his momentum. There was not a moment to lose. As he traveled along the lines of speeders he noticed that a driver had taken the same idea and was hopping from speeder to speeder. The man stopped and ripped the door off one of the speeders unlike any other. It was a strange place for such barbarism but perhaps the chaos was kicking off earlier than he would expect.

Overshooting the jump so that he landed on the hood of the speeder with a thump that dipped from the front of the speeder before it could correct itself. Turning around to look back at the driver and the hijacker. "Gentlemen. This is hardly the time for that."

[Sanis Prent]

"Are you both fucking crazy?" I screamed, gesturing wildly through my fractured windscreen at what looked like the vanguard of an invasion.

"Actually, let's table that for later. Hang on, if you want to live!"

It was every man for themselves, and the skylanes began to disperse with herd panic. The problem is that skylanes are there for a reason, to keep ships and speeders in their lanes and to prevent mid-air collsions. But all bets are off when panic hits. Speeders swerved left and right, smashing into each other and tumbling down the impossible depths, splashing onto others below who maybe didn't get the memo and were still in the queue.

I rolled my speeder out of the lane, gunning it to find a patch of open sky so I could set a vector - any vector - to the starport. Somehow, I hadn't lost my pair of party crashers.

"Either get inside or I'm gonna scrape you off! You're gonna get us all killed otherwise!"